Congratulations to Absalom and Blood Legion on the HoF world first! Great to see a US guild take it as well as a fellow prot paladin in there =)

I was checking out Absalom's profile and noticed that he was stacking mastery rather than worrying about hit/expertise. Now I know that world first type of clears are completely a different game than what I am playing (haven't even finished a clear on normal with my group that started this week because people level slow) but was just curious on what all you smart people think about this strategy? I have been gearing in the standard Control paradigm (Hit/Exp - Mastery-Haste) and it feels great but again I'm doing normal content.

Anything's viable if you play well enough. The fact that Absalom stacks mastery doesn't somehow make it a smart gearing strategy. In fact, I'm not sure what theory Absalom is basing his decisions on. My best guess is that the adds on heroic Shek'zeer are annoying enough that the higher block mitigation makes it worth stacking. But at the level these guys are playing at, they could stack spirit and still kill bosses.

Ironically, the person who's best-equipped to answer you is probably Treckie (well, or Absalom himself, but he hasn't posted in ages). Very few of us have seen heroic Shek'zeer, and without knowing more about the fight on heroic, it's hard to say why Absalom decided to go that route.

True that. I know Absalom used to post in here but, yeah. Maybe Treckie will weigh in. I won't see that content for a very long time (or ever) so its not a big deal. I was mostly just curious how that strat would pan out. Thanks for the input though Theck! Always appreciate your insights. Been reading these forums for a long time now and they have made me a successful (I think) main tank for my little guild. Thanks sir

Honestly, I do not understand how you can even play with so low hit/exp values, now the boss does hit really hard, and theres a bit of burst when traps expload and theres a lot of damage going around.That said, Shield of the righteous mitigates all that burst, and I cant see how having lower uptime on it is benefitial.I dont think there is a video out yet, so I dont know how they are handling the add phases.The adds in P2 ARE lvl 92, so you wouldnt need that much hit and exp to cap on those but a missed crusaderstrike/judgement there is easily a wipe, the tank damage is insane for a short period of time (you easily get 300k vengeance, sometimes up to 400k)I think they used a different p2 strat than us, but he is top 3 on damage so I guess he is taking the adds.Mastery is really good, but thats mainly for the passive block, not for its added SoTR protection, and with 300k vengeance bastion increase is useless cause you heal yourself for 800k

theckhd wrote:The fact that Absalom stacks mastery doesn't somehow make it a smart gearing strategy. In fact, I'm not sure what theory Absalom is basing his decisions on. My best guess is that the adds on heroic Shek'zeer are annoying enough that the higher block mitigation makes it worth stacking

This was my thought as well, I dont get what he is basing his gearing strat on, but I seriously believe that If you do not atleast hit/exp cap yourself for the adds, you are making it much harder for yourself and the raid, If id go all out with anything on this fight, it would definately be haste for higher uptime on SoTR.Blocking is nice tho, Warriors have a real advantage here having so high uptime on Shield block, almost enough to make me want to go with my warrior instead, but then 300k vengeance is a lot of healing

or maybe he is trolling everybody, they killed it with him being hit and exp capped and after the kill he changed to full mastery, so every other guild out there which didn't yet manage to kill the boss are getting more questions than answers out of checking out BLs armory ^^

Treck wrote:The adds in P2 ARE lvl 92, so you wouldnt need that much hit and exp to cap on those but a missed crusaderstrike/judgement there is easily a wipe, the tank damage is insane for a short period of time (you easily get 300k vengeance, sometimes up to 400k)

Damn...a wipe because you missed a CS/Judge is a small margin of error. I have so much respect for what you guys do!

Treck wrote:Mastery is really good, but thats mainly for the passive block, not for its added SoTR protection, and with 300k vengeance bastion increase is useless cause you heal yourself for 800k

That is really interesting because for some reason I was under the impression that it was for the SoTR protection. I figured you wanted the hit/exp so you could have consistent HP which led to a higher uptime on the SoTR buff, which was then being improved by mastery. I hadn't given much thought to the passive benefit.

Schroom wrote:or maybe he is trolling everybody, they killed it with him being hit and exp capped and after the kill he changed to full mastery, so every other guild out there which didn't yet manage to kill the boss are getting more questions than answers out of checking out BLs armory ^^

I'd do that if I where him.

The thing is that he has never been hit/exp capped, ever.I think he used to have a little bit more tho (you still need 12 exp to cap at lvl 92s) now he seems to avoid it like the plague.

Menian wrote:That is really interesting because for some reason I was under the impression that it was for the SoTR protection. I figured you wanted the hit/exp so you could have consistent HP which led to a higher uptime on the SoTR buff, which was then being improved by mastery. I hadn't given much thought to the passive benefit.

The "problem" with shield of the righteous is that it offers so much mitigation, even while completely avoiding mastery.I got almost no mastery, i have 3 parts that even give it and im reforging it away on one, and I still have 47% mitigation (with might).Absalom is stacking it together with stamina, not going all out for it, and his gear gives him almost 7k more mastery than me, thats just over 10% more reduction from SoTR, so with might he would reach almost 60% reduction while SoTR is up, and thats not bad at all.But the problem comes with how much uptime you have to sacrifice in terms of hit/exp to reach that level of mastery, and I really cant see it beeing worth it.The passive block pretty much means I have a 30% passive chance (my mastery) of reducing a melee attack by 30%, while hes got a 40% chance of reducing it by 30%, I dont see that beeing very gamebreaking.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Theck did show in his simulations that avoidance/mastery stacking does indeed reduce the amount of damage taken, in average. The key argument for the "control" strategies is that, for a boss that has slow but powerful strikes the probability to take a few of them unmitigated, in a row, is significantly reduced.

Now in an add tanking situation, where there are so many small attacks, I would expect that to be smoothed out, making the lower average damage income offered by a mastery strategy stronger. Still I would not expect this to be gamebreaking difference at least on my level of play. Playing with the control strategy is more fun, and also has higher healing and damage which can offset this.[Edit: Deleted my crappy math]

This might sound creepy, but I tend to stalk some of the top pallys to see what they gear and it's been very all over the place. Saw a lot of hard cap exp, saw a lot of <4% hit/exp, seen a few hard cap exp/super high mastery, and a LOT of <5% exp/hit but with high haste or high mastery.

Now to be clear, I've read Theck's math religiously (I even understood most of it) but it seems that among the top progression pallys there are about five or six different gearing strats. Why? Not sure, my personal theory is that it depends less on the hard math and more on what fits best with the fight, group, personal skill/play style, gear you have.

For me (I'm 6/6reg MSV in the first week, 3/6 HM MSV, 6/6 HoF reg, hold or held WoL ranks from #1-150 on almost every fight - yes I do think tank DPS is important) I've had REALLY bad RNG with drops. Average ilvl for my raid group is 494, I have all of 484 - three days ago it was 477ilvl, I only got lucky THIS LAST HALF OF THE WEEK and saw some drops. Being on the undergeared side of things and trying to do some fairly pro-faced progression (guild is top 100-200 since MoP release and we plan to stay there) I've had to make do with less, because of that I've tried just about all of the reforging strats there are and personally I've found that one of two ways is best for me, 7.50% exp/hit with high haste OR high mastery.

Mastery is my go to, I love being able to use it as like a mini-cooldown. So many fights have almost all or truly all physical damage that being able to pick when, where, and how I take damage is just amazing. Granted, my TDR is a bit lower than with a high haste build but I have amazing healers that can handle a little lower TDR when it's traded for being almost unkillable with things take a sharp left turn.

Haste is what I use when I need to push some major DPS numbers, the gain from the haste is just amazing on some fights (heroic Spirit Binder, reg Blade Lord, etc.) When the only thing that is standing in our way is 10% boss HP and a enrage timer, I bust out the haste and some Str food and we roflstomp the boss (reforge yak is super handy).

Two things that are ALWAYS the same between the two for me is I keep 7.50% exp and hit, getting the HP from it is really important imo, and I keep my dodge/parry rating as close together as I can. The DR from one or the other being higher isn't worth it when it's super easy to get it all balanced and clean with an addon like ReforgeLite.

Like I said, this is just my personal theory on it all and what I've seen from my own gearing and progression. I've spent around 25,000 gold on reforging and sat reading WoL for more hours than I care to admit, hope some of this helps.

I know for all of MV prog Fraggi looked to be stacking mast even at the expense of exp soft cap, saw him at 3-5% exp most of the time. As you say he's hit exp hard cap then haste stacking now. I think Theck makes a very good point in that those in the top guild could very likely gem spirit and kill stuff almost as fast.My guild is only a casual ish 10 man (2hm and 12 normal) I was going for hit/exp then haste gemming, but I've switched to hit>exp>stam>haste (just hit 700k buffed ) thinking the extra stam gives me and the healers more room to derp, top 10 mans probably don't need that extra room.

Daishan"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it." -- Terry Pratchett

Vayacondios wrote:Two things that are ALWAYS the same between the two for me is I keep 7.50% exp and hit, getting the HP from it is really important imo

I really dont get why people stop at 7.5 exp.I can understand if someone says they wanna completely ignore it, either cause they dont want hit/exp at all (even tho i fully think they are wrong) or if they say they only care about Judgement always hitting, and dont care that much about expertise.But stopping at 7.5 is just so weird, its like saying you only want 3.75hit, and wanna go half way cause of no real reason.

daishan wrote:I know for all of MV prog Fraggi looked to be stacking mast even at the expense of exp soft cap, saw him at 3-5% exp most of the time. As you say he's hit exp hard cap then haste stacking now. I think Theck makes a very good point in that those in the top guild could very likely gem spirit and kill stuff almost as fast.

As Fetzie said, you usually need less stamina in 10man than 25man, and mitigation is usually the way to go due to you having less healers.In 25man you have so many healers you can get away with taking a lot more damage, and its more important to survive between heals instead, while healer mana is a bigger concern in 10man as well.I havnt talked to him, but I think he recently saw the big benefit from having haste rather than mastery, and the ammount of haste he is stacking would make tanking very fun due to SoTR uptime.But hes got 90k hp less than me, fully buffed and with shaman vigor, i reach over 800k hp

Ill be swapping gems reforges and enchants around to max both haste and mastery to try the different versions out, that said, i wont go away from hit/exp hardcap in any version, its just not worth it.

I found haste pretty tasty in 10 man, I eased of it to get my HP back up a touch, but with SoL I'm basically at about 60% of a healer level HPS constant, more on Stone Guards where I topped the healing meters .

Extermi wrote:Correct me if I am wrong, but Theck did show in his simulations that avoidance/mastery stacking does indeed reduce the amount of damage taken, in average.

Theck showed that pretty much everything reduces damage taken just to differing degrees, even the old all avoidance/ forget hit and exp reduces damage taken over a fight just more spikey. Haste = Mastery it's just a matter of preference at this stage I think, you can't help but pick up quite a bit of mastery anyway.

Vayacondios wrote:Two things that are ALWAYS the same between the two for me is I keep 7.50% exp and hit, getting the HP from it is really important imo

I really dont get why people stop at 7.5 exp.I can understand if someone says they wanna completely ignore it, either cause they dont want hit/exp at all (even tho i fully think they are wrong) or if they say they only care about Judgement always hitting, and dont care that much about expertise.But stopping at 7.5 is just so weird, its like saying you only want 3.75hit, and wanna go half way cause of no real reason.

I would think it's around the same problem that I face when I look at going for hard cap. I'd like to get the hard cap, but in my gear it would mean that I would lose a LOT of everything else. Not having hard cap only costs be about 8-12 HP per fight (give or take a few, in I get bad RNG during HA it costs me more than normal) I plan on giving hard cap another try once I get close to the 500ilvl range.

The question remains, why stop at 7.5?Sure if you wanna get exp to hardcap without sacrificing to much of everything else and then successively get more and more the more gear you aquire.My point is, expertise doesnt scale differently past 7.5%, it just keeps working just like before all the way up to 15, you might argue that the chances of actually missing with higher values means its so rare its hardly going to make much differance anyway, but then I highly doubt 7.5 exp is the sweetspot.

Treck wrote:The question remains, why stop at 7.5?Sure if you wanna get exp to hardcap without sacrificing to much of everything else and then successively get more and more the more gear you aquire.My point is, expertise doesnt scale differently past 7.5%, it just keeps working just like before all the way up to 15, you might argue that the chances of actually missing with higher values means its so rare its hardly going to make much differance anyway, but then I highly doubt 7.5 exp is the sweetspot.

I think most people that stop at 7.5% do so because they're under the mistaken belief that it works like it did in Cataclysm, being twice as effective under 7.5% as it is over 7.5%. It's not a change that's been advertised that heavily, so I can see how someone would miss it.

The other potential argument is DPS. Assuming hit-cap, expertise drops off in DPS value at 7.5%. So a max-DPS build would be hit to 7.5%, exp to 7.5%, and then stack haste.

theckhd wrote:I think most people that stop at 7.5% do so because they're under the mistaken belief that it works like it did in Cataclysm, being twice as effective under 7.5% as it is over 7.5%. It's not a change that's been advertised that heavily, so I can see how someone would miss it.

Could you clarify that for the slow among us plz I'm assuming all of our holy power generators are tagged as melee attacks?

Daishan"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it." -- Terry Pratchett

In cataclysm, first 26 expertise were removing both parry and dodge off the table, since bosses had 5% chance to dodge and 12%~ parry chance. So the first 26 expertise would remove 5% dodge and 5% parry, then the following expertise would remove only parry cause all dodge was already taken off.

In MoP, bosses have 7.5% dodge chance and 7.5% parry chance. The first 7.5% expertise remove only dodge while the following 7.5% expertise remove only parry.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.